A month after a new Bayonne mayor and council shook up city hall, they are trying to bring big changes to the school board.

The Bayonne Council wants to let voters decide in November's general election whether they want the board of education to be an elected body. At Wednesday's caucus meeting, the council voted to place the ballot question on its Aug. 13 agenda for a vote.

Council President Sharon Ashe-Nadrowski said that if given the chance, residents will decide to vote for having an elected school board.

"I think the majority of people will vote for it," Ashe-Nadrowski said.

But the council president added, "It's not going to be a landslide" because of the still unknown costs associated with putting on school board elections.

After a little more than a month in office, the council is acting swiftly to fulfill a campaign promise of putting the school board question on the November ballot.

"We mean what we say," Ashe-Nadrowski said. "There are a lot of things we can't do right away. Everybody says we're going to stabilize taxes, but there are a lot of steps to do that. But [the ballot question] is something we can do immediately."

Mayor Jimmy Davis and the council inherited the current nine-member school board, whose members were all appointed by previous administrations.

The most recent appointments came weeks before former mayor Mark Smith was voted out of office. On May 15, Smith appointed Patrick Conaghan, Theodore Garelick and Michael Lawandy to the school board for three-year terms.

But if residents vote to have an elected school board, Ashe-Nadrowski said it is still unclear when school board elections could be held, whether or not those currently on the board can complete their terms, and the additional costs of running yearly elections.

The last time Bayonne residents elected a school board was in the 1970s. Bayonne remains one of the few cities in the state that does not have an elected school board.

Ashe-Nadrowski said the board of education controls the lion's share of Bayonne's taxes, and people feel "powerless" over school board members who are accountable only to the mayor that appointments them.

"The board of education is a big chunk of our budget," Ashe-Nadrowski. "And people just feel that don't have enough say."